'Splain It to Me

There has been almost wall-to-wall coverage of the alleged murder of Tyre Nichols by Memphis police officers belonging to a special crime-fighting unit called Scorpion. It’s a familiar pattern: a young Black man pulled over initially for a traffic violation and then being tased and beaten by the police.

What is unfamiliar, of course, is that the five police officers involved were also Black. So, what was going on here? That’s what I don’t get. Some may say, well, it’s a policing matter, race wasn’t involved. I’m not sure that’s the case, but I don’t know what IS the case.

Could these simply have been power-hungry cops angry because their orders weren’t obeyed? Or, were they trying to show fellow law enforcement officers that just because they were Black, Black suspects weren’t going to get special treatment. Or, was the message to the Black community that there is zero tolerance for crime, and they had to get the point across with harsh treatment of a community member? Was it simple group-think or the result of training or expectations? For heaven’s sake, they were wearing body cameras, weren’t they concerned that their actions might be met with some pushback later? Why didn’t other officers intervene? Why didn’t paramedics help Mr. Nichols? Didn’t anybody learn anything from George Floyd’s murder? Why, why, why?

Many have compared the video captured on those bodycams with the video of the beating of Rodney King by L.A. cops more than 30 years ago. It might be useful to remember that it wasn’t just the 1991 beating of King that sparked the fiery L.A. riots, but the failure of a Simi Valley jury the following year to convict four police officers charged in the case. The Memphis response seems very different, in that the police chief moved swiftly to fire the five officers and disband the Scorpions. The district attorney followed up with murder charges against them. Yes, the officers are innocent until proven guilty, and we don’t yet know what mitigating factors, if any, may still come out.

But there are other familiar patterns here: police officers behaving badly, followed by calls for police reform by outsiders. But the most common come from the media, as in, “We’re about to play this shocking video, but it may prove disturbing for some viewers, and you may want to take your kids away from the TV.” I’m getting a little tired of that one too. But it would be nice to get some answers to the “why” questions.     

 

Secrets and Lies

So now we have two Presidents, the current one and the former one, who took classified materials home. Donald Trump called the documents “his” and allegedly lied about what he was still keeping after the FBI came to Mar-a-Lago to collect it. In the case of President Biden, he said he didn’t know that there were such documents in an office he used back when he was vice president. More documents were found in a locked garage at his home in Delaware.

Unlike Trump, Biden has been cooperative about turning the materials back in – except he didn’t reveal what had been going on to the public until after the November mid-term election. Of the first set of documents, he said he was unaware of their existence at the private office - but he’s a lawyer, and what about the well-known attorney phrase, “knew or should have known”?

While the responses of the two men have been vastly different, I think the “average bear” couldn’t entirely be blamed for lumping the two cases together, I personally think there are bigger questions here, such as, who allowed them to take these materials - or helped them do it - in the first place? Clearly, it’s not just about these two men. There is a systemic failure here that needs addressing.

If someone tries to shoplift a pair of jeans from a department store, an alarm goes off to store personnel as soon as the item leaves the building. Couldn’t classified materials somehow be treated the same? Spray the pages with something that triggers an alarm? I don’t know.

There are many people in Washington with high-level security clearances. Should we be searching their garages?

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again here: I don’t think Mr. Biden should run for President again. Don’t misunderstand me: we have been very fortunate to have had him in this position the past two years, and I am grateful we will have him for two more. But this documents matter is just another bat the right wing can use to beat him up. If he bows out for 2024, it will de-fang their investigations and highlight the waste of time and money involved in pursuing them.

Besides this documents stuff, we have more important things going on at the moment, like whether our country will pay its debts and who really is running Congress, just for starters. Our plate is a little full, don’t you think?